Chelsea Pensioners

 

Young Chap Relaxes In Digger Bucket, Barnet

 

Rehearsing with Robert Rotifer

Here we are in our tea break. It's been a long time since our last gig (last summer, I think), but we slotted our respective musical contributions together quite easily, and I'm really looking forward to Saturday. Tickets here: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/594015

Punk Sews on New Patch In The Café at Rebellion Festival, The Winter Gardens, Blackpool, 2023

 

Wylam Institute

When I was a child the Institute felt like the centre of the village. There was a yearly village show upstairs, and I went to dancing classes up there for a while. The village shows were a hoot- one of the primary school teachers, who ran the school choir, wore very short mini-skirts and the Dads jostled to sit in the front row. The village choir, starring Mrs Hibbert (scourge of Mr Sleightholme, whose bantams I used to feed when he was away), always sang 'I've got a bonnet trimmed with blue, do you wear it, yes I do!'. They were mega-coy, and most of them seemed to wear that bright coral lipstick so we could observe just how heartily they articulated the words. The jumble sales were brilliant: I'd buy stacks of vinyl singles with no sleeves, tied up with hairy string, and take them home to see what I'd bagged. You could only see the top and bottom labels. I bought a fencing foil once, and a wooden Robert Thompson 'mouseman' ashtray which I sold on eBay in 2018 for £95 when I was selling stuff so I could go to New York. I think it cost sixpence! I also once bought a long 1930s pale green coat with bell sleeves and a satin lining; my friend at the time refused to walk down the street with me when I was wearing that.

And downstairs, that's where I went to Girl Guides every week. Sometimes I'd take my Spanish guitar and me and my friend Anita would sing the song that seemed to be ubiquitous at the time: I think it's called 500 Miles and was released by Peter, Paul and Mary. I was the patrol leader for the Kingfishers, and we got told off for doing art stuff all the time. Weird co-incidence- I don't think I've heard that song for 40 years, and it's just appeared in an episode of Professor T that I watching online!

Much later, there were a couple of discos there and even a live gig: there was a young chap called Gabriel Schuster who wore an academic gown and played long guitar solos, as I remember. So here is a gig in the Institute, alongside Floppy Posture, a band formed by my friend Simon Brough who used to do bellringing in Wylam Parish Church as part of a young posse. I joined first (McMum told me I should because I found the bellringing practices so annoying). His brother Andy, one of my best friends, died a couple of years ago. What a pity he can't come too.

Rams Micropub, Rochester, 1st June

 Tickets here: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/617904/

mp3s

I bounced everything down last night to make mp3s of the demos, just to see how they're doing. I wasn't intending to do any recording today but one of the tracks had a few lumbering guitar mistakes which I had to re-record this morning so I can relax over the weekend. I know the next couple of weeks are going to be busy: Robert's coming round to rehearse for the support gig with Jasmine Minks next Saturday, then I'll have to rehearse my own set for the gigs in Edinburgh and Manchester the following weekend. 

I'll have to record the lead vocals at the beginning of May when the hay fever season has calmed down a bit, but I might have a go at tidying up the backing vocals before then. Half the time, I think it's sounding really good, and the other half, I don't. It's funny how the tracks that sound best are often unexpected ones. I've written a song that sounds like A Proper Song. There's another that is possibly too sweet for this record; it's sounding quite energetic! 

I think you can hear in the music that I've left my lecturing job. Working there was like wearing a concrete hat that was compressing everything bouncy and joyful in life, and a mask of insecurity that nibbled at your face all the time because nobody ever said you did anything well, or appeared to notice if something you did outside the university environment was successful. It was all one big downgrade, designed to make you feel like an impostor for not going to a posh university or conservatoire to study music formally. What an upstart I must have seemed! 

In a world of my own, where I'm happy, I can spend 24 hours being creative and another 24 being political if that's the way the cookie crumbles. I will always treasure the relationships that I had with the students, the majority of them. I miss being surrounded by their ideas.

Anyway, I think I have a poster for the gig a week tomorrow. Oh yes, I do.

Boys Watch A Drain Being Repaired

 

Man Cleans Steps With Henry

Talleyrand, Manchester, 27th April

 

Knowle Constitutional Club, May 5th

 

Chefs Album Doings

In between recording and meeting friends, I've been sorting out various things with Ian from the label Damaged Goods for our Chefs vinyl release. It's going to be a double album, without the Skat songs (although Femme Fatale will be there, from our Richard Skinner session); the unreleased album will be there, warts and all (there are a few of those: almost inaudible vocals on some of the tracks), plus the track Locked Out from the WNW6 album. The email communication line is red-hot with details which have to be checked and double checked. It's incredibly useful having taught a music industry law module during lockdown, though at times like this I wish I had a manager to sort out all the advantages taken by huge publishing companies. Energy vampires, they are, gobbling up the energy that creative people put into the world and trying to leave them as dried up husks by the roadside as they prowl around looking for their next juicy victims.

Still, today I've succeeded in making a demo for what I think will be the last of the tracks for my own next album. I've rejected a few of the songs already, and may possibly invite a previous reject back into the fold, but it sounded meek in comparison to some of the others. Tomorrow will be the last day of working on them for a week or so, because I'll need to start rehearsing the McCookerybook and Rotifer songs for our gig in ten days supporting Jasmine Minks, and I also need to sort out some gig dates around some orphan venue shows. 

Tube workers, Embankment

This was last January, the day before the residency at Earl's Court started. I'd explained to the tube workers what I was about to do, asked if I could photograph them to draw, and they said yes. I spend an hour on each of these drawings, and will have to choose simpler subjects- it's frustrating to want to re-draw and finish some parts of them. Listening to Riley and Coe as usual, with an absolutely hilarious track by Vic Reeves called I Remember Punk Rock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVF_Pui1lAs

Salvation Army Band, Princes Street, Edinburgh, On A Cold Day

 

Nail

That guitar-pickin' fingernail! I wonder if I can go into a nail bar and ask them for just one fingernail?

I want to get on with my recording; I've been editing a lot today but need some fresh playing on the songs. I also have a gig with Robert in two weeks. The offending nail grew back, but now it's splitting again. I'd think it was a diet issue, if all of my other fingernails weren't completely fine. 

I worked on one of Gina's songs this morning, and have backing-vocalled my own songs to extinction, at least to the point at which I have to stop because it's so hard to subtract music from music: you have to build it like a house of cards and not let it topple over.

It really does have to be guitar next.